


I Wish That I Could Just Be Brave

by sister_dear



Series: Screaming Out a Love Song [7]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Addiction, Background Poly, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, discussion of drug use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-20 07:16:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8240954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sister_dear/pseuds/sister_dear
Summary: Cait makes her big confession in true Cait fashion; awkwardly and while fighting off hordes of super mutants. (Inspired by the odd places the companions choose to bare their souls to the survivor.)





	

MacCready’s shot screams past Cait’s head, catches the super mutant in the throat. The tremor when he drops rattles the old wood under her feet. It’s the last straw for an old bookshelf shoved up against the wall. Dusty, rotting books scatter and bounce as the mutant thrashes, making sounds that remind her of when the raiders would put a knife in the side of a brahmin and leave it to bleed out slow. 

The hallways of the old library are narrow. His dying throes block the way, temporarily separating Cait and her companions from the rest of the mutants. They’re out of her range, but she’s not out of theirs. A sharp tug at her collar, a curse in her ear; Ada pulls her into a doorway as bullets rip into the walls around them. Cait twists her head around the corner, watches MacCready pop up over the overturned table he’s using as cover. His shot is rushed, only catches his target in the shoulder. 

Now. Now would be the ideal time for a shot of psycho. Revulsion twists in her throat, a lurch of searing pain in her stomach. Her fingers hover over the study pouch that houses her needles, do not dip inside. 

The mutant blocking the hall goes still. The hail of bullets pause as the one with a gun tries to find his targets. Ada leans around Cait, chest knocking heavy against her in the the tight doorway. Cait can feel the rough wood in a solid line at her back, splinters catching on thick leather. The grenade in Ada’s hand goes flying. The explosion is even louder than the shooting. Cait works her jaw against the ringing in her ears. Ada bolts out the door. Back into the hall, rushing the mutants head on while they’re disoriented. Trusting Cait to follow. To have her back. So Cait does. 

Something clicks in her mind. Between one step and the next, as she’s taking a running leap over what’s left of the first mutant’s limbs. The words come flying out of her mouth. If she actually stops to think about them she won’t say them at all. “Ada!” She yells, “We need to talk!”

“Ok. Now?” Ada disembowels the one with the biggest gun, takes a swing at his neck when he doubles over. Her sword catches halfway through. Cait dodges the spray of blood. 

Cait’s shotgun bites into her shoulder as she fires, distracting the one trying to come up on Ada’s bad side. She shouts past the concussive boom of the shot. “Look. We’re friends, right?” She fires again, blurts the words out while she cracks her weapon open, fingers fishing for fresh shells. “More than friends. You’ve had my back now for longer than pretty much anyone.” She closes the shotgun with a snap, whips it back up to her shoulder and unloads it again into the big one charging at her with a board heavy enough to snap her spine in two. 

The look Ada shoots her is all dropped jaw and arched eyebrows. “Cait, damnit.” Ada cuts herself off to deal with the mutant trying to take a swing at her. She wrenches away, sword still lodged in the neck of her first opponent. It bats at her weakly, slowly sagging in place. 

Cait knows this isn’t the best timing. She has to get it out now, is all. Before she loses her momentum. 

Cait’s mutant staggers. She cracks her gun, tilts it to drop the shells, keeps talking. “I been thinking. With, with us finding a cure for Duncan, and what with the three of us getting pretty serious and all. I mean. I care about the two of you.” She has to pause there. Feels significant to say it. Leaves her breathless like a long kiss. 

A shot from MacCready catches her mutant in the eye. He drops. Cait feeds her shotgun two more shells. 

“Cait!” Ada bellows, furious, sword finally free. She’s backing towards Cait, sizing up the last mutant. 

“I’m sick,” Cait confesses into the momentary silence. 

“Cait,” Ada pants. She’s got blood all over. “Darling. Your timing fucking sucks.” 

The mutant bellows. Charges. Not them. He’s going for MacCready. Cait fires once, has to stop or risk hitting MacCready. MacCready’s shot gets the mutant in the gut. He doesn’t slow. Ada hamstrings him just as his fist comes down. MacCready jumps out of the way of his fall. Puts a bullet into the back of his skull. 

Ada straightens, checks that MacCready’s okay with one swift glace as he does the same to her. His job’s harder. Ada always winds up bloody. Then the both of them look at Cait. 

She stands alone in the middle of the hall, shotgun limp in her hands. It strikes her, what she’s just said. Just admitted to. Her hands start to shake. 

Ada and MacCready exchange a speaking look. He turns to watch their backs. She steps over bodies, coming back to Cait. Sticks her sword through her belt, claps Cait firmly on the shoulder. Her grip is sticky with drying blood, the callouses on her palm familiar. 

“Right. Calm down. Explain.”

“It’s the psycho.” Cait feels halfway to crying, but she doesn’t. Not ever. Doesn’t matter, the both of them can surely hear the tremble in her voice. “I can’t stop. I- I been sneaking it behind your backs. I know you caught me a time or two. But, but I’ve been taking it so much. I don’t feel right. I don’t like it. I don’t want it any more.”

“Doctor Sun,” MacCready suggests. He glances over his shoulder briefly, half his face hidden between his collar and the brim of his hat. “He can’t cure everything. But we’ve got the caps. Might be worth a try.”

Cait shakes her head. “He can’t help me. I tried. But. There’s a vault. Vault 95.”

“Incoming,” MacCready interrupts. His gun comes up, shoulder strap wrapped tight around his arm to brace. Cait curses. 

“What about Vault 95, Cait?” Ada demands, shaking her. 

“They got some kind of- look out!” Cait’s turn to tug them down. Ada drops with her. Shrapnel flies over their heads, the wash of an explosion heating their backs. Cait pops up over a fallen shelf, fires one shot point blank into the mutant on the other side. Ada runs him through, finishes him off. 

“The point, Cait,” she bellows, leaping over their makeshift barricade. 

“They got some kind of machine to get people clean!” Cait follows her over. Only two mutants this time, one of them already dead at their feet. 

“Where is it?” Ada blocks a wild swing from the other. The mutant jerks in time with a crack from MacCready’s gun. Ada stabs him. MacCready shoots again. This time he falls. 

“Edge of the Glowing Sea,” Cait says once the room is quiet again. 

“The Glowing Sea,” Mac shoulders his gun, comes up beside her. “Great.” He nudges one of the dead bodies with his boot. Something jingles in the pouch on the mutant’s belt, but Mac doesn’t investigate, just gives her a sidelong look from under the brim of his hat. Cait flings her arm across his shoulders and steals it right off his head, grinning at him as she pops it on. She blocks his attempt to steal it back, which quickly evolves into an impromptu wrestling match that ends with him in a headlock, turning the air blue. Cait looks up to Ada, grinning, to show off her ‘prize,’ and only then realizes the quiet isn’t just Ada watching their backs while they roughhouse. 

“Staying clean isn’t that easy. You know that, right.” She’s uncharacteristically serious as she says it. 

Cait’s arm goes slack around MacCready’s neck. He tugs himself free, brows tucked down, furious. “Ada, for fu- are you for real?” 

She shoots him a quick frown. “I’m not saying we’re not gonna go. We’ll get you clean if that’s what you want. But it’s the staying clean that’s hard. You have to know that. You have to be ready for that.” She props her sunglasses up on top of her head. Meets Cait’s eyes, utterly solemn. 

Cait looks away, buys herself time to think. The brim of MacCready’s hat hides their faces. Hides her face. Past experience tells her to snap and snarl. More recent exposure finds it strange that she’s trying to pull away. Because she doesn’t have to. Not from them. 

She takes the hat off, plants it back on MacCready’s head. Twists it down good and hard with the palm of her hand. He grumbles at her obligingly. 

No hiding. She meets both of their eyes in turn. “I don’t want to feel like this any more. I want to be better.”

Mac offers her a fleeting, quirky little smile. Ada nods. “So we finish up here, stop at home to re-supply, and then head west. We can wait to collect payment from Daisy for this goddamn book until we get back.” 

Mac shakes his head. “Fine, fine. Great. Can we get moving before more mutants find us with our pants down?” He crouches to rummage for whatever it is that’s clinking around in the dead mutant’s clothes with the relieved air of a man finally giving in to temptation.

The unused psycho sits heavy in Cait’s pocket. She forces her fingers away, grips her shotgun instead. She’s going to get better. She’s going to stay better. She is.


End file.
